Hand-makers: What's your problem?
Handmakers - what's the biggest thing holding you back? What's the hardest thing about hand-making or, better still, making money from it? What would make you more successful, most? If you could ask a fairy god mother to wave her magic wand and make one thing happen, what would it be?
I'll tell you why I want to know. It's for two reasons. Firstly, I have entered a period of "post exhaustion". It happens from time to time. You lose your way and motivation. I have been writing this blog for over a year now with very little feedback!
The second reason I want to know is I think I can help. Especially, if the main answer is what I suspect it is - being less invisible.
The web has been great for hand-making. It's given designer/makers access to a mass market, a global market. But, as the web has grown exponentially, so it has become increasingly difficult for any individual business to be seen.
These days, having a website seems just the start of your problems, doesn't it? Because, once you have it, you have to try to get people to visit it. And, that's not easy. Adwords or pay-per-click can be prohibitively expensive. While, PR, search engine optimisation and other forms of marketing all require either lots of time or lots of money or both.
But hey, I am second guessing your response. Please, please do drop me a comment and tell me what's troubling your handmaking business; what's holding you back; what you are struggling to fix. Alternatively, you can email me at steve@pretty-somethings.co.uk
I hope to hear from you. Thanks.
Steve
I'll tell you why I want to know. It's for two reasons. Firstly, I have entered a period of "post exhaustion". It happens from time to time. You lose your way and motivation. I have been writing this blog for over a year now with very little feedback!
The second reason I want to know is I think I can help. Especially, if the main answer is what I suspect it is - being less invisible.
The web has been great for hand-making. It's given designer/makers access to a mass market, a global market. But, as the web has grown exponentially, so it has become increasingly difficult for any individual business to be seen.
These days, having a website seems just the start of your problems, doesn't it? Because, once you have it, you have to try to get people to visit it. And, that's not easy. Adwords or pay-per-click can be prohibitively expensive. While, PR, search engine optimisation and other forms of marketing all require either lots of time or lots of money or both.
But hey, I am second guessing your response. Please, please do drop me a comment and tell me what's troubling your handmaking business; what's holding you back; what you are struggling to fix. Alternatively, you can email me at steve@pretty-somethings.co.uk
I hope to hear from you. Thanks.
Steve
Labels: hand-making business
posted by Suggy at
07:20
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2 Comments:
Hi Steve
I think your blog is very useful and I am suprised that you don't get more feedback from it. I have several problems (that I am willing to talk about!). I think the main one is getting visibility in a very saturated market. Learning about promoting a website is a massive challenge and also making my products just a bit different from everyone else's. I have developed a mailing list and send out email updates and don't get much response from them. Only about 30% of recipients even open them! Are people suffering from email overload? Have I got my pricing right? etc etc. I believe I have a good product (using high quality materials, ethically sourced etc) and my customers are pleased with my product too, and I get a lot of repeat business. But I think there is just too much competition in the jewellery market and so that is my problem in a nutshell - gaining visibility in a saturated market and developing a unique selling point that makes people want to buy from me rather than the next jewellery designer.
Hi Steve -
Although my handmaking business won't be ready to start for a few months yet, I felt as though I owed it to you to comment, because it would be a shame if you were to lose heart over the lack of feedback. I take your advice very seriously and will be referring back to it when making important decisions about how to market my designs in future. Please believe me when I say that your blog has given me ideas I would have never had otherwise, stopped me from making some stupid mistakes and cheered me up when I felt alone. I haven't been able to find such honest and sensible advice on jewellery-making elsewhere and am grateful for the effort you make to reach otherwise isolated individuals, to whom your blog makes such a difference. As a first-time handmaker of very limited means, the question that worries me is whether or not it will bother a company to find out that you can only make, say 50 of a jewellery design before the stock needed to make it runs out. Are any stockists willing to take a gamble on a small-time jewellery designer in the faith that their product will sell enough to fund the next batch of stock?
Thanks again for all your care and attention on the blog.
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